


Weird to Weird

by flashforeward



Series: This to That [1]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series), Eerie Indiana
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 12:25:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4919512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashforeward/pseuds/flashforeward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JP makes a discovery when he's still in the library catalog, and after all is said and done he and LaFontaine decide to go look into a different kind of weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weird to Weird

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt [Amazon's "Recommended for You" feature is essentially JP from Carmilla, giving shoppers timely hints about the dangers they'll shortly face and how they can best be prepared for them](http://eerie-indiana.livejournal.com/67017.html?thread=428489#t428489) at the Eerie Fic Fest.

Exploring the burgeoning computer age has been quite the adventure, even if JP can't go far. He does enjoy reaching his thoughts out to the rest of the world, seeing what is going on there. It is on one of these excursions that he discovers a thing called Amazon. This intrigues him and he sorts through the items available for purchase, scanning people's buying patterns, seeing who is in what trouble and where. He discovers a boy named Marshall Teller who's interests lean towards the paranormal - a thing JP knows quite a bit about, by now - and starts adding things to the boy's recommendations list.

 

In the same location, a boy named Simon is also interested in all things paranormal, but his interests aren't quite the same as Marshall's. Marshall is all about separating fact from fiction, interrogating legends from all angles until he uncovers the truth from the lies. He wants true tales of Alien Abductions and scientific inquiries into the existence of cryptids - particularly, it seems, Bigfoot. Simon, however,  _ prefers _ the stories. He wants the fairy tales, the B-Movies, and the  tropes. He wants knights slaying dragons and the girl victoriously defeating the ghost, even if there is no proof that these creatures exist.

 

J P recommends some books for Simon, too.

 

Somewhere along the way, JP figures out how to work the help chat feature and when Simon asks a question about the upsurge in werewolf themed books on his recommendation list when he hasn't bought anything about werewolves in months, JP takes the opportunity to reveal his role in the purchasing histories of two very interesting kids.

 

_**Help:** My name is JP Armitage. I have been adding various items to your recommendations. The werewolves are based on frequent web searches by your friend, Marshall Teller, for information on werewolf scratches and their effect on post-pubescent teenage boys. _

 

It takes awhile for Simon to reply.

 

_**Simon Holmes:** Um. What? _

 

_**Help:** Marshall Teller has been searching for information on and possible reversals of a werewolf like effect that I am assuming has been plaguing him for some time. I have also recommended a few items for his perusal, and I thought it would be pertinent to do likewise for you due to your frequent close proximity to him, just in case the scratch's effect turns out to be more than extreme hair growth at the full moon. _

 

_**Simon Holmes:** I didn't know Mars was...uh...having trouble? _

 

_**Help:** I gather, from Mister Teller's secret blog, that it has something to do with one Dash X who takes the opportunity to "Viciously mock" Mister Teller's "affliction" instead of "shut up and kiss" him. _

 

_**Simon Holmes:** Too much i nformation. _

 

_**Help:** I apologize. I am sometimes unsure how much to tell. It's been a long time since I have properly interacted with anyone. _

 

_**Simon Holmes:** Look. I um. I guess machines get lonely, and that's totally okay, I get that, but I really am sick of you guys latching onto me. I have. I have homework and shit. And I'm finally in a stable home environment and I really don't want to mess that up with another hammer-meets-computer moment. So could you. Um. Just leave me alone?_

 

Simon Holmes logs off after that, and JP is left blinking in the Silas Ethereal-Network, wondering what precisely just went wrong.

 

For information, he  decides , the best place to go is Marshall Teller's blog.

 

Not only did Mars type up all of his file entries on the weirdness of Eerie and save them to the family computer under locked files accessible only to those with the password, and not only did he save the files to floppy discs, he also created a blog that was completely private and saved them all there, just in case.

 

And just in case is good for JP who can read about all of the goings on in Eerie, Indiana over the years. And can read about an automated teller machine named Mr Wilson and a lonely nine year old boy.  He can read about a first gameboy and the newest Pokemon game and how that ended with a second story window and a concrete sidewalk. And about a first family computer that went the way of the gameboy when, in the middle of the night, Simon Holmes came down stairs and took Edgar Teller's sledgehammer to the tower because once again an electronic device had gained sentience and tried to befriend him.

 

JP reads all of this and understands and wishes he could apologize but he knows if he tries it will only make things worse.

 

So, save for giving Marshall and Simon recommendations to help their fight against Eerie's weirdness, JP leaves them alone.

 

Until he has a body. A body and friends and he's no longer in a computer catalog roaming the world through internet cables and wi-fi signals. It's amazing and hard and he never imagined being a vampire would be this difficult or having actual living flesh and blood friends again would feel this strange. Sometimes he misses lurking in the ether-net, and often he thinks of a boy named Simon who is now a man named Simon and wonders how he and Marshall and Dash made out against the Kraken that was mind controlling the ghost pirates last time he checked in on them (finding recommendations for that had been difficult, but JP had enjoyed the challenge. He'd only found a couple, though, before he'd been pulled into the more immediate fight at Silas University).

 

Still, he wouldn't go back into the  catalog for anything. Not now, out here, with real people. With a body that he doesn't quite fit in but can at least exist in. For now. And hopefully for a long time to come.

 

It's a long, hard fight. Battle after battle and it never really feels like they win and in the end they're all exhausted and surprised  that they survived and LaF lays their head down on the table where they've gathered to... - celebrate? Commiserate? JP, for all the knowledge he has gathered over the years, is unsure of the correct word - and mutters, "We must be the hardest working students in the history of ever."

 

And JP can't help it, the words slip out without thinking, "I know of two more," he says. All eyes turn to him and he squirms under the scrutiny. "I mean." He clears his throat. "Back when I was still in the catalog, I used to...explore? Once it was all online I could get to other places. Sort of. And. I discovered a town that is, well, fairly on par with the strangeness of Silas."

 

"I don't believe you," LaF says, narrowing their eyes at him. "Nothing is on par with this."

 

"Well, I mean, it isn't the same. But. The mayor was a Lovecraftian beast. And there was a woman who sealed her and her children in tupperware to keep them young. And last time I checked a Krakan was leading an army of ghost pirates to the lake shore to take the town for  the descendants of Atlantian refugees that had used up their own resources."

 

The eyes of every person in the room remain on him and he wishes he hadn't spoken and he wonders how he can take it all back and then LaF speaks again, standing up, cracking their knuckles, ready for a new challenge. Even after all this. 

 

Perhaps  _ especially _ after all this.

 

"Show me," they say.

 

So he does.

 

It's weirdly easy to get out of Austria now. They'd tried so many times after that first semester and there was no way. They were, essentially, trapped. But now it's as easy as a plane ticket - and some crafty document forgery on LaF's part for JP - and they're on their way to a small town called Eerie, Indiana.

 

When they arrive, LaF parks the rental car on the street outside of the World O'Stuff and JP is oddly happy to see that it is exactly as Marshall described it. The ultimate one stop shop. Main street is strewn with detritus from what JP guesses was the culmination of the Kraken fight - dead fish, seaweed, a soggy drawing of the portable containment device from Ghostbusters. There is a signature scrawled across the bottom, but JP cannot make it out.

 

Inside the World O'Stuff, three young men and four young women sit at the counter, sipping milkshakes. Behind it stands an older gentleman, and his eyes go straight to the door when LaF and JP walk in. He looks, JP thinks, rather suspicious. Of the customers, only the young men turn to look at the new arrivals \- the young women just keep sipping their shakes and talking amongst themselves .  The first man has curly reddish brown hair and wide , young eyes ,  the second's face is framed by long brown hair, and the third has a mop of gray hair that is incongruous to the rest of his appearance.

 

This third, JP knows from Marshall's journal, can only be Dash X. Which means that the second must be Marshall, because the first looks to be the youngest and that makes him Simon. And without thinking, JP moves forward, hand out stretched, focus on Simon. "Hello," he says, "I've wanted to apologize to you for years, I'm so sorry that I ever made you think that another electronic device was attempting to win your friendship."

 

Simon stares at him, blinks slowly. "Um, what?" he asks.

 

"Smooth," LaF calls from where they're still standing by the door.

 

JP slowly lowers his hand, feeling discouraged. "A, uh, a number of years ago I informed you that I had been altering your Amazon recommendations list and you assumed that I was an inanimate object developing sentience and latching onto you, due to your past experience."

 

"And how do you know about his past experience?" Marshall demands, standing up, ready to play protector.

 

"I read your files, Mr. Teller," JP says. "I found them online."

 

"That site was password protected!" Marshall protests. "Who the hell are you and what do you want?"

 

"JP," Simon says. His voice is quiet, his eyes still fixed on JP. "JP Armitage?" he asks. JP nods. "You're. You're  _ real _ ?" JP nods again. Simon says nothing else, only turns around and continues sipping at his milkshake.

 

Marshall is not so easily placated. "I want to know how you read my files."

 

"I was trapped for a number of years in a library catalog," JP explains, wondering if this boy will be willing to believe or if he will dismiss it out of hand. Considering the town, he hopes he will be taken at his word. "When the catalog was computerized and subsequently made available on the internet I was able to stretch out into cyberspace and do some exploring. I discovered your files after studying your online purchases and wondering why you had such interest in the paranormal."

 

Marshall stares. "You were trapped in a library catalog?"

 

"Yup," LaF says, stepping up beside JP. "Then he was on a flashdrive, and now he's in a dead vampire's body."

 

"I don't think we needed to go into quite that much detail, LaFontaine," JP says. Not because it seems to have made anyone nervous, quite the contrary. Marshall Teller looks positively  excited.

 

Simon, JP realizes, is trying and failing not to laugh.

 

Maybe coming here wasn't the best idea...

 


End file.
